For those of you hoping Eddie Alvarez would pop up inside an Octagon near you sooner rather than later, I've got some bad news.
He still has five months left on his Bellator contract.
Indeed, while Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) may, in fact, be courting the former lightweight champion, they'll have to wait at least another five months -- and maybe another fight -- before making any meaningful play for him.
Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebey recently spoke with MMAWeekly.com and though he understands that business is business, he hopes his promotion can get at least one more fight out of Alvarez before he bolts off to greener pastures.
If he does so.
"We're talking to him; we'll see what happens. We may cut a deal with Ed. We may not cut a deal with Ed. We've got about another five months left on our current relationship with Ed and another fight, so we may do another fight with Ed. There's a lot of different alternatives. ... Right now our eye is on the ball with doing one more fight with Ed, but you never really know in a contractual situation like this."
One of the top 155-pound fighters in the world, regardless of promotion, Alvarez proved to the MMA world that he is indeed one of the division's elite, taking out another top contender, Shinya Aoki, in a little more than two minutes of the opening round at Bellator 66 in Cleveland, Ohio.
With the victory, not only did Alvarez get back to his winning ways after losing his title to Michael Chandler at Bellator 58, but he also got his long-desired revenge on the Japanese submission specialist who defeated him at Dynamite!! back in 2008.
Sporting an overall 23-3 record with wins over the likes of Roger Huerta, Pat Curran, Tatsuya Kawajiri and Joachim Hansen, Alvarez says he's ready to take his talents to the world's best MMA proving grounds.
But he'll have to wait for a while to make it happen ... if UFC -- or maybe even Strikeforce -- will have him.
